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barrels. Sailors went lurching past and an occasional natty officer, one in uniform with a lady in a mauve overdress and bustle as big as a bushel basket sticking out on her behind, sashaying along. Over her head she held a matching parasol. A Negro servant walked behind them carrying a satchel and a cloak, and behind him came a cart loaded with four trunks, pulled by a weary gray horse. On the land side of the street stood offices of maritime brokers and lawyers, sail lofts, occasional restaurants. The nearby tavernswere dark and rowdy and dangerous. It was said that a drink called the Mickey Finn could knock a man right out so he could be robbed or shanghaied aboard a ship leaving port. The offices of the steamship company, however, were clean and orderly, with many clerks at high desks writing rapidly on ledgers and foolscap. Freydeh and Sammy stood there for what felt like hours before anyone spoke to them.
    Sammy introduced himself. “My mother and me, we’re trying to find my aunt Shaineh Leibowitz, my mom’s youngest sister. She was supposed to come over on one of your ships, the Freiheit, but we didn’t get the letter until this week. It went to the wrong house.”
    The clerk made them wait around, but finally he found Shaineh’s name on the manifest of the Freiheit that had arrived in port on November 9 of the previous year. Shaineh had really come. Of course they had no idea where she had gone or what had happened to her. When they left the office, Freydeh covered her face and leaned on the stones of the building. “Poor girl. What did she think when I wasn’t there for her? What could she do?” She stared out over the gray waters where a huge steamship low in the water was being drawn by a tug toward the Hudson.
    “You know how those people from the boardinghouses around here, they try to grab the luggage of the greenhorns and drag them off to board with them.”
    “I don’t think she spoke a word of English. She must have been terrified.”
    “But, Freydeh, wouldn’t she go to the address she had?”
    “If she could figure out how to get there, sure. But Big Head never told me she came by, and Pearl didn’t mention it. So I wonder if she ever got there.”
    “How much you trust that crook?”
    “Not a pinprick worth, believe me.”
    She had planned to go to immigration next. The clerk at the Hamburg line told her they would have a record if Shaineh had been denied immigration and gone back. “A girl alone,” the clerk had said, “probably they’d keep her for a few hours, but there’s no record they sent her back. They don’t like young women traveling alone. Still, providing she had your name and address, they’d take that into account.”
    She decided to sit for a moment and think about what they should do. She bought a couple of hard-boiled eggs and some hot corn cakes and coffee from vendors and they walked into the park to eat. This park by the Battery had been closed to ordinary people for years when this had been afancy neighborhood, but now anybody could sit in it. In the center stood a bandstand. Middle-class people liked to promenade there and listen to concerts. Sometimes there were rallies or parades, as there had been the day Moishe and she had arrived. The people in fancy clothes had glared at them as they staggered out of immigration.
    The wind was strong here but it smelled better as they sat on the bench eating their lunch. Seagulls swooped down on them crying out like street arabs in hopes of grabbing crumbs—but they weren’t about to leave any. They watched ships pass each other off the Battery, most of the sailing ships going toward the East River, most of the steamships into the Hudson. The masts of the sailing ships stood up in a forest of poles above the warehouses and shops of sailmakers and outfitters. The horns of the steamships blared as smaller fishing vessels and ferries crossed their path. It looked like chaos but every vessel seemed to go where it